


Empty Promises

by TheGirlWithThePen



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst?, Comfort?, Episode 69, Gen, M/M, WWMD (What Would Molly Do), caleb has a lot of feelings (about molly), i just really miss molly, molly has a lot of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 10:12:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19766059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGirlWithThePen/pseuds/TheGirlWithThePen
Summary: They promised not to say anything about the resurrection to Molly.They promised not to ask about the scars all over his body.They promised not to mention anything to Caleb.So when his friends promised that they wouldn’t let anything happen to Yasha as they entered this…place, Molly had no reason to worry.Molly is alive, Yasha is in danger.





	Empty Promises

They promised not to say anything about the resurrection to Molly. They promised not to ask questions in the quiet of the night when they found him crying in the tent he shared with Yasha and they didn’t, not even when he disappeared in the middle of the night to clear his too-full brain. It was one of many unspoken agreements that the group had. Even the night after Jester brought him back, amidst the drinks and the tears and the questions, after Molly had asked them not to bring it up again they did not speak of it.

They promised not to ask about the scars all over his body. Not the thin ones that he created himself with his sword, but the larger, thicker ones that he woke up with. The scars that he showed off through his open silk shirt when they travelled and the ones that went the entire length of his legs. They never said a word about it, and they didn’t intend to.

They promised not to mention anything to Caleb. Moly knew he would get uncomfortable. In the morning, after the first night, Molly had quietly asked them to keep it to themselves where he and Caleb’s relationship was involved. Even though Beau sniggered and Nott glanced worriedly towards the tent where Caleb was still asleep, they promised. The group let him have quiet mornings and long nights in privacy until they could figure out what this feeling was between them.  
So when his friends promised that they wouldn’t let anything happen to Yasha as they entered this…place, Molly had no reason to worry. They had (barely) survived the Iron Sheppards and the mess that was Xhorhos, they had remained a team on the ocean and had even picked up Caduceus. This trip to maybe finally give Yasha what he couldn’t have would be simple. Find this guy and figure out what he knows about Yasha—his best friend’s—past, give her the peace of mind that she could never give him.

Molly’s midsection started to burn as the others began to pull in their desperation to get across the bridge. Dodging a swing from the previously catatonic Beau, Molly pried himself out of the rope and sprinted with the others to the other side of the bridge where Jester and Nott has appeared. Just as he prepared to take the final few steps, the laughing and screaming from below crept into his brain as suddenly, there was just white. Suddenly there were memories flooding in from every direction.

“Empty,” his favorite word, repeated again and again until it tasted like rust on his tongue, bitter and metallic. The sound of it filled the white before flashes of the last year raced through his mind almost too fast for him to see. He saw the circus: the red and white of the tent and the faces of Bo and Toya and even Kylre. Molly watched as bits and pieces of his new family darted past his eyes. Empty.  
He saw the bath houses in the Empire, and he saw the ports of Nicodronas. He remembered seeing the scars on his companions and he remembered them seeing his. The questions asked over fires and between tankards of foul-tasting ale. He saw the damp and musty cellar where he collected tiny pieces of himself. Nonagon, Lucien—empty.

He remembered the look on Caleb’s face when Beau and Yasha told him of their encounter with Ikathon. That was the night Caleb had told Molly what was really haunting his dreams at night. He saw flashes of the first night Caleb allowed himself to feel anything other than regret. He tried to make that one last a little longer, but it slipped into the next memory. A sword in his chest and blackness. He briefly heard Keg swear before the moment Jester would bring him back. Back into this life for yet another chance to get this right. He heard Caleb pleading with him to come back, not to leave them—him—here.

The most recent memories, Xhorhos, the bright queen, even the angels, flew past him at a speed so rapid that they were just grey blurs before his body was jolted back into consciousness. He froze, blinking for a moment before taking the last few steps off the bridge just as Yasha dodged an attack from Beau. As Fjord leapt onto the platform where the rest of them stood, the group moved forward into the next chamber.

They all looked so tired, so worn out. He could see the hardened determination on Yasha’s face as they wore on, the doppelgangers taking more out of them still. Molly watched as Yasha fought a grinning version of herself through the mirrored walls and began to worry. What if this was a trap? What if Oban was using them to release something much worse? Whatever was down here was dangerous enough to warrant being guarded by lethal angels and lightening.

All he knew is that he wasn’t going to let anything happen to Yasha. His new little family had grown suspiciously protective of each other in the short time that they had traveled together. Almost loosing each other multiple times has knitted them closer together than any of them had been prepared for.  
As they moved into the next room, a familiar voice filled the room. Molly watched as Fjord sent two purple blasts towards the Drow figure as Molly drew Summer’s Dance across his forearm, wincing at the familiar burning before swinging his swords in an arc behind him. Fjord summoned the balgura and the team began lashing out, doing all they could to stop Obann form summoning this entity.

Molly watched as Yasha climbed up on the sarcophagus and tried to coax Obann into range, but failed. Jester’s whip lashed out, but it was too late as the chains on the tomb shattered, sending Yasha back towards the rest of the group. A wicked grin met the group as the monster charged at Jester. As Molly swung towards one of the shadowhounds, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, as Fjord fought off the Laughing Hand as it tried to attack Jester.  
As the giant cat paw that Caleb controlled battered down Obann, Caduceus swung his heavy wooden staff, but missed. They party took shot after shot and hit after hit at this thing as it transformed from Drow to some unsightly creature. As it tried to fly away, Fjord jumped up, swinging his falchion into it’s side, killing it. As the demon disintegrated, it had occurred that now no one would be able to raise it to interrogate him, but before he could voice this thought, he saw a wicked grin creep across Yasha’s face.

Molly had seen all the sides he thought Yasha had. He’d been there when Yasha was at her highest, just after the circus has picked him up when she began to regain her confidence. Her smile filled her entire face and she almost glowed. It was a brief period of time, but it was a look that he had occasionally seen after a battle with the Mighty Nein or after a watch with Beau, but Molly knew not to expect it much.

He had also seen her at her lowest, or, more correctly, the lowest he knew about. Molly had held Yasha as she cried for a love she could never get back. He watched her eyes fill with tears at the thought of not knowing who she was and what she was capable of. He’d confided in her at their most desperate times, choosing to create an ally and friend in the large barbarian vowed to do all he could from seeing her like that again.

Molly also could tell when Yasha was scared. He must admit, he wasn’t very familiar with seeing his friend in any state of fear, but the more Molly thought about it, the more he realized that many times, he had mistaken her fear for anger. A very, very common emotion that Molly had seen Yasha have. Fear was what Molly had seen when those dark, blackened wings had forced themselves out of her back. Fear was what the look in her eyes was that night on the boat, after defeating that lightning creature and fear is what Mollymauk saw in Yasha’s eyes as the descended underground after Obann.

But this? They’d been together for long enough that he was confident in this thought, but the smile that made its way across Yasha’s face was one he had never seen before. It was almost like a determination. To what, Molly didn’t know. He heard Fjord shout to Yasha to go with him by whatever means of magic he had getting away, and he had assumed she went with him.

He was proven wrong several seconds later when he watched as the Magician’s Judge swung down towards Beau before turning to Molly. Once, twice Yasha swung before the cold metal blade found purchase across his midsection and Molly gasped. The warm blood seeped through his silk shirt and the cut hurt almost as bad as the betrayal at the hands of Yasha.

As the door began to close, Molly ran toward it, watching as Caleb scooped Cad up and bolted toward the door in gorilla form. Just as Molly was about to run through it, he watched as a confused looking Fjord ran back into the room, face to face with the Laughing Hand. Beau jumped in and Fjord in a familiar fashion before she ran out of the room; and someone triggered the door to close.

Molly watched as his best friend, the girl he watched grow into a woman ran closer and closer before he finally realized that she wasn’t going to make it. Looking around, he seemed to be the last one to catch on.

“She isn’t going to make it!” He screamed, looking towards Jester and Nott who were seemingly reaching out to her. He couldn’t tell at this point if he was speaking in Common or Infernal. His heart froze up as he made a run through to the door, but stopped when he felt a hand around his wrist. Fjord looked down at Molly, a look of sadness and betrayal in his yellow eyes.

“She didn’t want to come with me out of there Molly,” He told him in a low voice, but it didn’t register. Molly was too preoccupied watching the door close on the only person who really and truly knew him. He ran towards the door screaming for Yasha, begging for someone, anyone, to do something.

“Jester! She’s still in there! We can’t just- Nott do something!” He cried, tears streaming down his face. Molly was vaguely aware of Caleb’s arms wrapping around his as he struggled closer to the door before Beau and Caduceus grabbed him around the middle, lifting him off the ground. “We can’t just leave her there to die!” He shouted out, his voice thick with a mixture of pain and fear. “Yasha…” Molly croaked out as the door slammed shut. As the rest of his friends dragged him out of the temple, and back through the horrors they had just come from, one friend short.

As the gray of Baxxoxan greeted them, the realization of what had just happened fell over the party like a tar. It was something that was visibly weighing on them, but for Molly, all he could process was the look of pure rage on Yasha’s face and the hit after hit that she landed to her friends, the people she had been travelling with for the last year.

Why? That was the thought that Molly couldn’t let go of. Making camp a ways out from Rosohna, Molly left the party quietly to sit a ways off by himself. It was only then that he allowed his body to shake and wrack with the sobs that he held in his chest. He screamed and cried and cursed every god and goddess he could think of.  
He made deals to the open air and he couldn’t help but think of the irony. Yasha was the person who taught him to read. She helped him navigate human interaction, despite her lack of enthusiasm. Yasha had taken Molly under her wing and listened as he tried to talk through every memory he didn’t have. The same person who had watched him invent who he was couldn’t recognize him.

Molly tried to get the picture of Yasha’s eyes trained on him as she swung out of his head for hours. But it was immediately replaced by the door closing on the Aasimar warrior. Molly stayed out on the hillside all night until the sky began to lighten with the promise of a new day. Molly knew he should be worried about the consequences of having failed this mission. But between the cut on his ribs and the weight on his heart, he couldn’t bring himself to care much.

As the dawn spread across the sky, muted but resolved, Caleb joined him. The ragged man offered no words of support or solace, not that Molly expected him to. Caleb simply put a hand over his and leaned down to put his head on Molly’s shoulder, offering him company of someone he trusted.

Molly didn’t know how long after that Jester called for them so they could head back to the capital, but as the seven of them silently trudged on, he sent up one last silent prayer to whoever was listening that Yasha would come back. He just needed Yasha to come back whole, as herself, in whatever capacity that entailed.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me at @disasterd20 on twitter and disasster-tieflings on tumblr!


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